#kuro134

Hello Anon! Okay so, in my opinion (which isn’t everyone’s obviously, here’s another take on your question for example), I think it is because the big bad wanted to annihilate Vincent’s family in the worst way possible, out of revenge or maybe as a punishment. 

First of all, here’s who I think the big bad is: [x][x]

Secondly, one possibility I could see as an explanation is the big bad having an old grudge against the P family and Vincent didn’t manage to act well enough to erase the danger of being eliminated.

So murdering him and his wife, which left their sons to be defenseless, and then making sure child traffickers would get the twins (thanks to that possible supernatural dude who killed everyone before abducting the boys in ch134)…

…and sell them to horrible psychos was the plan 4 years ago.

In my opinion, the twins weren’t meant to survive whatever would happen to them after being sold into captivity and I even think that this guy from ch137 (who was possibly the same guy as ch134)…

…was there to make sure they could report to the big bad that the twins ended up dead, by whoever bought them.

However, something totally unexpected happened…

because a demon was summoned, which allowed for one boy to survive and come back. That’s the gist of my thoughts. 

Since we don’t know for sure why Vincent had to die though, if it was in relation to his mother also possibly ending up murdered or not, and what kind of supernatural being works for the big bad (shinigami, demon, angel maybe?), it’s unfortunately hard to develop more than that. 

We don’t even know if the person I’m referring to as the big bad may not be manipulated herself in the first place (in s1 of the anime she was), so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that’s about it for now.

The only thing I’m reasonably sure of though is that Vincent always expected to be killed, but he didn’t expect for his sons to suffer and that’s where he fucked up. And the reason for that may be because, when his own mother probably was murdered, he and his sister didn’t have anything done to them.

So ask yourself this: if two Watchdogs were murdered in the span of 20 years, but only one set of children had to suffer, what changed between the two murders? Did it somehow become even more personal? Was it a message? That’s what I’m looking forward to find out. 

Hello. :) I was about to joke that we already got that flashback (ch134), but I get what you’re saying, haha.

Between you and me, I’m pretty sure we’ll get another flashback about what happened 4 years ago, if just because we need to know what happened during that one month for Tanaka, UT, the Midfords, etc (we already know for Ann). Maybe Tanaka will be the one to share (either by the means of a flashback or because we’ll see his cinematic record :/), but it will not be for now.   

However, even with another flashback, I kinda doubt we’ll see more about Vincent’s death, even if I definitely agree that Rachel tried to protect Vincent and took the first blow instead of him, which is why…

they died like that, with Vincent embracing Rachel. T_T 

I agree with you Anon, I believe they were the real deal, along with Alexis and Frances, which actually soothes my heart because we know that Vincent and Frances probably didn’t have the best childhood ever (if just because Claudia died and they were still young), but they found love and managed to have a pretty united family until 4 years ago and that means a lot to me. 

Like, they are the only two canon ships we have so far, but in general I like the idea of Phantomhives being lucky when it comes to love (Vincent & Rachel, Alexis & Frances, probably Claudia & UT and even Ciel and Lizzie’s cute dynamic), especially since they have such a dark and twisted fate otherwise. You know, that makes for a fairer balance. :)

As proposed on Friday, here’s a recap post about my take on it, for the few who wanted it and in hope that it might help some others with the few misunderstandings I’ve seen going around. Let me know if anything is not clear!

First thing first, despite the name of the theory, real!Ciel isn’t exactly the mastermind or the real target of Ciel’s revenge for me, if just because he and our!Ciel wouldn’t have ended up with child traffickers and sold to the cult if there wasn’t another party involved (and wanting for them to suffer). 

So someone else definitely manipulated real!Ciel and his possible wishes, in order to get to the Phantomhive household. They sent someone, very probably a supernatural being considering how they appeared right behind our!Ciel, to kill almost everyone before making sure the boys would know Hell.

For simplicity’s sake and this post, we’ll assume the true mastermind is Queen Victoria (+ John Brown) and if there is a need for more explanations, please check these posts [x][x].

Moving on, in my take of the RCMT, there were only two attackers on December 14th: 

and while #1 is the supernatural being (Brown?), #2 is real!Ciel (see below). 

However, I know, why would a ten year old child ever wish doom on his own family? 

Well, first of all, things very probably didn’t go according to real!Ciel’s plan, way before the boys were even given to child traffickers: I’m of the opinion that initially all that real!Ciel ever wanted was for his father to die. And why? Because with Vincent dead, he was the next head of the Phantomhive family and as such...

...he might have a say into his little brother’s project to go to London and become a toymaker, leaving him behind. 

But things escalated from the twin’s initial plan, very probably because of the real mastermind who used real!Ciel’s little wish to get his father out of the way to almost entirely annihilate the Phantomhive household, before getting rid of the twins in a much crueler way (possibly because real!Ciel was an accomplice). 

So overall was it a horrible, irrational and childish idea coming from real!Ciel? Well, yeah, but he was ten years old and, mostly...

he apparently had (& still has as a bizarre doll) a rather pathological attachment to his little brother (bordering on obsession really) and that could be enough of a reason for him to truly fear the future separation. 

He might have even seen his parents as being unsupportive of him and his issue on the topic, because they clearly seemed to be okay with our!Ciel’s choice in ch133. Thus getting rid of at least Vincent to replace him and have his say on the matter was a minimal price to pay for not being separated from our!Ciel.  

I disagree with fans labelling real!Ciel a psychopath in the past (it’s possibly different now because of UT), however I do think something was wrong with him if his little brother was the only one who mattered above everyone else to him. And, again, I really think that’s the case because...

(”together” as “just the two of us”)

...Lizzie, the Midfords, Ann (before she died)? Well, he didn’t/still doesn’t seem to consider them at all. :// Our!Ciel does though...

and that’s from where I draw a comparison between what’s normal and what seems to be less so, because it’s as if Sensei wanted to insist that they’re very different on this point. 

So, looking at ch133/134, what happened?

First of all, it’s very important to realize that there is a one and half year time skip between real!Ciel breaking down about our!Ciel leaving him behind (with Vincent and Rachel not taking his side) and December 14th, 1885. 

And it’s important because that means that Sensei purposely hid what the twin did or even how he acted between the incident and the actual massacre, after focusing for two chapters on real!Ciel being bothered by his brother leaving him. 

So “he was a sweet kid, loved his parents and he would have never done that”? Well no one can know that for sure, since it’s not like we really saw anything about him between “I have no choice but to become Earl Phantomhive” and the attack on the manor. Besides, it’s kind of very Sensei-like to do foreshadowing this way, just saying.

Moving on, I’m not going to expand on how/when/why real!Ciel could have ended up as an accomplice of the attack of December 14th because we have no clue of that yet (that’s all in that one and a half year missing from the flashback), however I think everyone pro or against RCMT realized by now that the outsider who killed almost everyone received help from inside the house.

That helper is real!Ciel for me: he’s the one who muzzled Seb the dog and locked him in, so that he wouldn’t warn anyone/attack the intruder, but also maybe so that he wouldn’t be killed.

As I said above, I doubt that real!Ciel considered that anyone besides his dad had to die for him to get what he wanted and both the dog and servants could still be useful to him as the next Earl anyway (in order to keep the exact same household, except for Vincent himself). 

As for Rachel, well, from the way she and Vincent died, embracing each other...

...I think she tried to shield Vincent and was killed first. ;_; 

However, had his initial plan gone perfectly, I’m not sure either that real!Ciel thought it necessary for his mother to die (just like the dog and servants).  Either because he imagined that, once he’d be Earl, a woman would have no way to stop his decisions (I mean, look at what he said to Lizzie, I know he was a kid but ://), or because he thought she could understand after what she said about her and Ann in ch133.

There again, real!Ciel’s plan definitely didn’t go as expected, since the real target of our!Ciel’s revenge ordered her assassin to annihilate the whole household instead (the twins awaiting another horrible fate), which...

is

what 

took 

place. Well, almost because someone survived.

Before I get to this part though, I have to say: I don’t think real!Ciel is the one who killed his parents. He wanted his father dead, yes, but he’s not the one who stabbed them, or Seb the dog, or even most of the household. 

Just look at ch134, all the dead people our!Ciel came across had a lot of blood pooling around the bodies, a lot of blood on the walls or furnitures around too, which in my opinion signs the work of a real skilled killer (that supernatural being, attacker #1). 

So I doubt the twin would have been able of that, not at ten years old, not when he didn’t have blood on his clothes and not when he seemed to suck at fencing. What he did do however is at least muzzle and lock the dog, take the Phantomhive ring from his father’s hand (the ring that proved he could inherit the position after his father)...

and possibly stab Tanaka at least once (making him attacker #2). 

The reason I think the twin is the one who stabbed Tanaka is the opposite as to why I think a real pro took down everyone else: Tanaka was stabbed twice 

meaning that the first time wasn’t enough to kill him, so:

either he held his own against a supernatural being because he was strong enough 

or real!Ciel is the one who wasn’t skilled enough to kill him on the first try. 

Also, the second time Tanaka was stabbed was precisely as he attempted to warn our!Ciel of something about real!Ciel...

And if real!Ciel was in on the plan about December 14th, frankly I doubt he’d want his little brother to know that he was an accomplice in the massacre that took place. 

The last chapter even implied that servants aren’t exactly people real!Ciel tends to care about anyway...

...so who knows if even Tanaka wouldn’t become disposable from the moment he caught on about real!Ciel being an accomplice? ://

So basically, real!Ciel is the one who stabbed Tanaka in the back, just as Tanaka tried to warn our!Ciel, but then the supernatural attacker showed up and took our!Ciel away before he could see who was the one with the knife. 

I know Tanaka is still considered as a suspect by some fans, but honestly I just can’t see how or why. And when it comes to how Tanaka managed to survive his wounds and the fire that destroyed the whole manor, since that’s one point making him suspicious, I discussed it a little here for those interested.

Additional hints & details for the RCMT

To tie with the more recent chapters, since UT brought back the twin, but not mandatory when it comes to understanding the theory, so under read more: 

Hi Anon! Well, as @akumadeenglish explained here, the RCMT doesn’t have as much of a strong basis as other Kuro theories do for now, so I’m pretty sure a lot of people are on the fence in general about this theory and you’re not the only one. :)

The way I see it, either all the little moments about the twin that are suspicious are indeed hints that he played a role during the attack on December 14th, or these are red herrings, because Yana definitely seems aware of the big theories going around in the fandom. 

One thing is for sure though: our view of real!Ciel definitely is influenced by previous chapters, hence the RCMT becoming more popular despite us not having a lot of hints, because we already got a proof of how ruthless he can be:

Also, the fact that his character remains pretty consistant between 4 years ago and the current arc is part of why it’s “easy” to suspect him…

Because there has been a huge emphasis on real!Ciel’s desire/wish/obsession to “not be separated from his brother” and, the fact they were young and immature children when the whole tragedy happened makes it hard to know if this was just a childish vision or if real!Ciel was dead serious about staying with his little brother. 

So it’s just… hard to say with the content so far.

One thing that’s important though is that the best way to remain not biased about this theory certainly isn’t to start blaming Vincent and Rachel.

It’s not particularly directed at you Anon, but I don’t like shorcuts which is why I might as well insist that, from the moment the current flashback made clear that the two sons were raised similarly (same education, same parental love), I think it’s hard to blame Vincent and Rachel for anything when our!Ciel turned out okay as a child.   

If the RCMT is correct, then the only thing one can be pissed at would be at nobody noticing that real!Ciel’s obsession with his little brother was not normal. However, even in that aspect, I have my doubts about “no one noticing”:

Please keep in mind that Vincent, as a character, is a pain in the ass to read through because he constantly sends off mixed signals, but…

…I think he’s way more observant than the story seems to give him credit for. Don’t take it too seriously though, as I said I just have doubts. 

Anyway, from the moment our!Ciel initially moved on from his disappointment of never becoming an Earl and found something else to rejoice about in his future…

…if the same thing didn’t happen with real!Ciel and led to the attack on December 14th, despite the twins being raised similarly, I personally don’t think Vincent and Rachel can be blamed.

TL;DR As far as I’m concerned, the RCMT remains more of a crack theory for now, knowing that, if the twin was indeed involved with what happened 4 years ago, I personally think that’s because he was partially manipulated by the person who sent the killer(s). 

And if the trigger to his involvement was linked to his fear of being separated from his little brother…

…then it might mean that there was something pathological about that obsessive mentality of his from the beginning.  

Hey, but if the RCMT is accurate somehow, because real!Ciel didn’t want to be separated from his brother and Vincent’s enemies manipulated him using that, then it really reminds me of Urasawa Naoki’s Monster and the Liebert twins:

Johan Liebert, who is an actual psychopath (when we’re still wondering if real!Ciel had sociopathic tendencies of his own, was manipulated or if he was just a normal kid) was a little obsessed with Anna (Nina), his twin sister, whom he literally saw as his double. 

After everything they went through, she always was the most important person in his life and his behavior towards her as a result was... peculiar. From TV tropes:

and

The difference between real!Ciel and Johan is that the Liebert twins didn’t have such a fancy childhood, whereas Vincent and Rachel managed to create a loving environment for their sons.  Also, Johan doesn’t get manipulated, ever, rather he is the one who manipulates everyone whereas real!Ciel, in the case of the RCMT or even in the current arc, probably was manipulated.

me @ that dude in black, the first time I read the chapter this morning:

also me right now @ that dude in black who teleported and dared to even touch my poor and smoll son, who just stumbled upon his entire household being murdered on his freaking 10th birthday, even though he had never done anything wrong back then

Hi Anon!

Actually, I think the reason you might think there is a difference of height is the dynamism of the whole scene. :)

Just think that, after being stabbed, Tanaka is falling down towards our!Ciel and the ground in these two panels meaning that, in the first panel, he’s closer to the attacker and their knife than he is to the ground, while in the second panel he’s closer to our!Ciel and the ground than he is to his attacker.

So basically, the attacker remains with the same height but Tanaka is falling down and thus making you think that there is a difference. 

As for this wound on his right side…

@thedarkestcrow proposed an explanation here!